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Retired admiral sworn in as U.S. ambassador to South Korea

Posted on Monday, July 02, 2018 by Willis Stokes

Leah Millis Reuters

White House national security adviser John Bolton says the USA could dismantle North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs within a year if the North Koreans committed to scrapping their arsenal in accordance with the agreement reached in Singapore last month.

One U.S. official said the regime has stopped nuclear and missile tests but "there's no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production".

The information would contradict US President Donald Trump who has said North Korea no longer represents a nuclear threat.

Samantha Vinograd, President Barack Obama's former Director for Iraq on the National Security Council warned that North Korea is deceiving President Donald Trump and he doesn't seem too anxious about it. Evidence collected since the June 12 summit in Singapore points to preparations to deceive the USA about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea's arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, according to the report.

Bolton told CBS News that if Pyongyang has already made the "strategic decision" to end its weapons development program and "they're cooperative, we can move very quickly". "He said he took care of it".

Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said he had heard from US and South Korea officials that Pompeo was expected to return to Pyongyang at the end of this week and that Sung Kim was working to prepare the way for that trip.

Bolton's supposed one-year plan, which was widely panned by North Korea experts on Sunday, is similar to what he used to call the "Libya model".

Kim made the request during his 3rd meeting with Xi in Beijing last month, and the Chinese president promised to do his "utmost" to satisfy it, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

Mr Trump, in remarks broadcast on Fox News Sunday, said Pyongyang was "very serious" about efforts toward denuclearisation. Have I been in deals, have you been in things where, people didn't work out?

That assessment has reportedly concluded that North Korea is not only trying expand their arsenal in the weeks since the summit, but figure out how to declare less nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel production facilities than they have. I shook hands with him. North Korea has great potential for the future! I got along really well with Chairman Kim.

Bolton agreed that North Korea "certainly" has a history of using diplomacy as a cover, but said "Kim Jong Un was very emphatic several times in Singapore that he was different from prior regimes". He spoke with the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea in recent days about the situation with the North, according to the State Department, which has declined to comment on any upcoming travel.

But Pyongyang has kept its counsel on the denuclearization issue since the meeting.